Many bacteria of the family Micrococcaceae have been recognized to be effective in food industry, pharmaceutical industry, chemical industry, environmental cleanup, and other fields. For example, in producing dairy products such as cheese or in other fields, propionibacteria are used. As L-glutamine-producing microorganisms, bacteria of the genus Brevibacteria are known.
However, wild-type strains of the above bacteria have various problems such as the lower ability to generate products and the difficulty to culture the bacteria. To solve such problems, attempts have been made to obtain variant strains that have the improved ability to generate products and adjust to the environment, among other things, through genetic manipulation of the bacteria. Among those used for the manipulation are vectors such as plasmids, which are autonomously replicable in the bacteria. For example, one of the vectors available to propionibacteria is disclosed in Patent Publication 1, JP 2002-112790 A (the disclosures of Patent Publication 1 are incorporated herein by reference).
Among the bacteria belonging to the family Micrococcaceae, bacteria of the genus Kocuria are known. Bacteria of the genus Kocuria show high levels of organic solvent tolerance, heavy metal resistance, and proliferating ability, and are expected to be used in various fields, such as production of fuel and pharmaceutical chemical products, and environmental cleanup.